In the many years that I’ve been consulting for SAP, balanced reporting is the area where I’ve run into the most issues. By balanced reporting, I mean assets equal liabilities and equity by company code or other reporting elements within an organization. Most organizations would like the ability to produce balanced reports by elements lower than a company code or by elements that cross company codes. Producing these reports has been a very difficult task in early releases of SAP. Some organizations use the monthly balance sheet adjustment programs for business area and profit center, but find them extremely tedious and limited.

The split processor, part of the FI Special Purpose Ledger (FI-SL),¹ works well to provide balanced reporting for business area, profit center, and fund. It is a relatively new functionality that has been standard since R/3 Release 4.5B.

I’m going to show you how to use the split processor to get three additional fields for balanced financial reporting. Once you activate this functionality, you can produce balanced financial statements (assets = liabilities and equity) by business area, profit center, fund,² or any combination of the three. This is real-time functionality that does not require any batch processing or month-end programs to generate balancing entries. No postings in FI will be affected by using the split processor, as it uses only FI-SL postings. By the end of this article, you should be able to understand what the split processor is doing, and know enough about the set-up process to do some trial and error with it.

First, I want to give a brief example of the split processor in action. Figure 1 is an example of how the split processor will balance a simple set of procurement transactions by business area using the splitting method. The goods receipt posted in FI posts expenses to account 6100, business areas 0001 and 0002. The credit is posted to the goods receipt/ invoice receipt account 2110 with a blank business area. In FI-SL, however, this posting to the goods receipt/invoice receipt account is split based on the amounts posted to the expense account and different business areas.

Also notice in Figure 1 my example of an invoice receipt where the FI document does not contain any business areas at all. In this case, the split processor in FI-SL goes back to the goods receipt and uses the same split percentage for each business area. It will break out both the goods receipt/ invoice receipt account 2110 and the accounts-payable account 2120.

My final example in Figure 1 is a payment document trade to the vendor for that invoice. Again, let’s assume the FI document does not contain any business areas. The split processor in FI-SL goes back to the goods receipt to determine the appropriate amounts to post to each account/business area. The accounts-payable account 2120 and the cash account 1010 are both broken out for business areas 0001 and 0002 accordingly.

Before we turn to directions on setting up the split processor, I want to alert you to one more important point concerning how it functions. This deals with the case of missing instructions. In the examples in Figure 1, the splitting does not occur automatically unless you have set up instructions to R/3 on when and where you want it to happen (see the section, "Configuring the Split Processor").

However, what happens if a posting is made in FI, and R/3 cannot find any splitting instructions that fit that particular case? The answer is similar to the PCA module’s use of an official "dummy" profit center number if all else fails, so that the FI ledger and the PCA ledger stay in synch.

To make sure that all debits and credits stay in balance in a given business area, the split processor will use an official "dummy" G/L account number if all else fails, as shown in Figure 2. Note that the debit and credit entry in the FI document both have a business area, but the debits and credits do not net to zero for either of the business areas. If you did not include an instruction to R/3 in your split processor configuration setup on how to handle this situation, the default response will be something referred to as the "balancing method" to splitting. This method uses a dummy account number of your choice to ensure that debits = credits in the FI-SL posting, not just for the company code, but also for both business areas.

An example of missing instructions is the assignment of a G/L account to an item category in the split processor configuration. The Item category defines the type of an account, i.e., cash, accounts payable, expense. The account used in Figure 2, 6100, should have been assigned to an expense item category. This assignment was not made in configuration, so the system does not know the type of account. Because of this, the split processor does not know how to handle the splitting for the account. The balancing method is then used.

Prerequisites in FI-SL

When using FI-SL, you must create your own table groups. This article assumes that you have configured your FI-SL tables and ledgers for those tables using the delivered tools in the IMG. To use the split ledger, however, you must make changes to the FI-SL line-item table. Work with your Basis team to implement the following changes.

1. Using transaction code SE11 (menu path Tools>ABAP Workbench> Development>Data Dictionary), add the fields listed in Table 1 at the end of the line-item table.

2. Assign a receiver field of RWCUR for field WSL. This can only be done in the data dictionary transaction, SE11. Enter the line-item table and click on the display button. Go to the Currency/quant. fields tab. Scroll down to the WSL field at the end of the list, as shown in Figure 3. Enter the line-item table as the reference table and RWCUR as the reference field. Save and activate the table.

3. The user-defined field movement (defined in transaction code GCF2) for your FI-SL table for FI entries must also include the fields shown in Table 2.

When entering field names, you will receive a message that they are not in the summary table but that they do exist in the line-item table. Press the Enter key to move past this message and save the field movement. The FI-SL tables are now ready for use with the split processor.

Figure 3

Assign receiver field RWCUR to field WSL

Configuring the Split Processor

I will walk you through a simple configuration example for the split processor. The example was created using R/3 Release 4.6C.

Say that your business has a requirement to produce balanced balance sheets by business area. You cannot meet this need without running month-end programs or configuring the split processor in FI-SL. Because you would like to produce your business area balance sheets at any time during the period, you cannot use the balance-sheet adjustment programs at month end. You must use the split processor to meet this requirement.

You can access the basic configuration in the FI-SL of the IMG. To begin the configuration for this split processor scenario, use transaction code GLFLEXSPL to access the menu that contains all split processor configuration. Pieces of this configuration are in the IMG, but you can access the more complex configuration only through this transaction code at this time. The rest of the steps are as follows:

Step 1. Assign Your GL Accounts to Item Categories in the Split Processor

Follow the IMG menu path Accounting>Financial Accounting> Special Purpose Ledger>Actual Postings>Settings for Accounting Integration>Document Splitting> Assign Account Number Item Category. You should see the screen shown in Figure 4.

Item category entries are predefined by SAP and should not be modified. The Item category section groups accounts that have similar activities or purposes—i.e., cash and accounts receivable. This helps determine how the split processor will handle the transaction. If you have a cash account, it would be assigned to the item category for cash accounts. The item category will work in conjunction with the business transaction variant assigned to the document type and the splitting rule to determine how the account should be split. For example, if the original posting was an A/P invoice that is now being paid from the cash account, the cash account is split based on the expense lines in the invoice. The cash account item category helps the split processor determine this process.

Figure 4

Assigning accounts to item categories

Step 2. Assign All Document Types to Business Transactions and Transaction Variants

Follow the IMG menu path Accounting>Financial Accounting> Special Purpose Ledger>Actual Postings>Settings for Accounting Integration>Document Splitting> Assign Document Types. You should see the screen shown in Figure 5.

Business transactions are used by the split processor in determining how a document type is processed. A customer invoice (document type DR or RV) is processed differently than a vendor invoice (document type KR or RE). The transaction variant specifies which account item categories can be used with this particular business transaction. In Figure 5, most of the business transactions use variant 0001. They are not all the same variant. Variants are configured under business transaction events and have specific settings for specific business transaction events. SAP created all the standard variants as 0001. An example is that Variant 0001 under business transaction event 0200 (Customer invoice) has a mandatory item category of 0200 (Customer), while the variant 0001 under business transaction event 0300 (Vendor invoice) has a mandatory item category of 0300 (Vendor).

SAP delivers standard transactions and transaction variants, but you can add your own if necessary.

Figure 5

Assign document types

Step 3. Define the G/L Account to Use When Appropriate Splitting Cannot be Determined

If the split processor cannot determine the splitting method, then it must resort to the balancing method as illustrated in Figure 2. To use the balancing method, the split processor needs to know what G/L account to use as a clearing account. A debit and credit are posted to this account for the business area, profit center, or fund to balance the entry. To assign the clearing account, follow the IMG menu path Accounting> Financial Accounting>Special Purpose Ledger>Actual Postings> Settings for Accounting Integration> Document Splitting>Define Account Determination.

Step 4. Assign Transaction Codes to Transactions and Transaction Variants

This is similar to step 2. To perform this step you must use transaction code GLFLEXSPL to access the split processor configuration. Then follow the menu path Business Transaction Variant>Assign Transaction to make the assignments on the screen shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6

Assign transactions and transaction variants to transaction codes

Step 5. Activate FI-SL for the Split Processor and Define the Fields for Splitting

The ledger must contain only currencies that are recognized in the FI company code (company code currency and parallel currencies). This setting is not retroactive for FI-SL ledgers that already contain data.

To activate the split processor, first follow the IMG menu path Accounting> Financial Accounting>Special Purpose Ledger>Actual Postings> Settings for Accounting Integration> Document Splitting>Assign Ledger Splitting Method and Fields. From here, perform these steps:

• Double-click on the ledger. The ledger must be assigned to the FI-SL table that was modified in the prerequisite section of this article.

• Click on the Splitting method button and select Method 0000000002, as shown in Figure 7.

• Click on the Assign fields button.

• Click on the New entries button and add the field GSBER with the description Business area, as shown in Figure 8.

• Activate the Zero blnce button. The system will check the document after splitting is complete. If the document is not balanced for each field with this setting activated, balancing entries are generated.

• Save the settings for the ledger.

The basic configuration is now complete and ready for testing.

Figure 7

Activate the split processor for FI-SL

Figure 8

Add the fields needed for balanced reporting

² See OSS note 335651 for adding fund.